Guerrero's Governor Floats Idea of Medical Opium Production to Reduce Cartels Hold Dave Graham - Reuters
go to original March 15, 2016

Governor Héctor Astudillo (El Universal)

A senior Mexican official has said legalizing cultivation of opium poppies for medicinal purposes might help reduce violence in one of the regions most affected by brutal drug gangs that have ravaged the country for years.

Hector Astudillo, governor of Guerrero, one of the most violent states in Mexico, told Milenio television it was worth at least exploring the possibility of allowing cultivation."Let's do some sort of pilot scheme," Astudillo, a member of President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, told Milenio in an interview recorded last week but broadcast yesterday.

"Provided it's used for medical issues ... It's a way out that could get us away from the violence there has been in Guerrero," he added.

Home to the beach resort Acapulco, Guerrero was the scene of the September 2014 disappearance of 43 trainee teachers, who the government says it believes were massacred by a drug gang working with corrupt local officials and police. The disappearances sparked widespread international condemnation of the state of law and order in Mexico.

Astudillo, who was elected governor of the southwestern state last year, said Guerrero could not tackle the violence on its own, and argued bringing poppy cultivation into the open could weaken the hold gangsters have on local farmers.

More than 100,000 people have died in Mexico due to clashes between drug gangs and the state since the previous government sent in the armed forces to fight the cartels in late 2006.

Read the rest at Reuters

Related: Most Heroin in U.S. Now Comes Across Mexican Border, Rob Portman Says (PolitiFact)

Related: Mexico Marijuana Debate: Secretary of Government Osorio Chong Opens Possibility of Marijuana Regulation (Mexico Voices)

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